


In the Dark

by prestissimo



Category: Firefly, Serenity
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Brainwashed!Simon, Brainwashing, Chinese, Gen, Implied Torture, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Implied/Referenced Rape, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, Post-Movie, Psychological Torture, Reaver!Simon, Reavers - Freeform, Simon the Reaver King, Torture, post-BDM
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 13:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5376809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prestissimo/pseuds/prestissimo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-BDM. Simon gets captured by Reavers. River goes after him. What they bring back to the ship isn't Simon. It's something...more. Told from Mal's perspective.</p><p>Hover your pointer over the Chinese for a few seconds to see the pinyin/pronunciation and the translation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Bushwhacked (Episode 3), Serenity movie

It had happened so quickly.

It was supposed to be a quick friendly stop for some quick supplies and a small trade. Doc had come down to see if he could help any townsfolk who might be sick. Sister had come along for the ride. She jingled coin in her hands with a smile as Simon went inside to attend to a pregnant woman.

Then the screaming started. The next thing Mal knew, he was sprawled face-down on the Mule, reaching out for someone who wasn't where he was supposed to be. He saw Simon, mouth open, face pale as his hands were stretched out past the rust-red rags of the Reavers who were dragging him back. There wasn't even time for shock or fear to come across the doctor's face.

"Hold on, Doc!" Jayne yelled, aiming with his pistol. "I ain't gonna let 'em get ya!"

It had happened so quickly.

"No!" shrieked River, knocking him off balance. He crashed into Mal, who was still trying to drive the Mule with his knees.

"Better dead than alive in their ruttin' hands, Crazy!" Jayne yelled at her, red in the face and angry as they sped away. "That was my one shot!"

"We're getting him back! They're keeping him!" she screamed at him, and shoved Mal away. Instead of turning back as he expected, however, she headed full-tilt into Serenity. He dropped off the Mule and onto his back, but the world hardly even stopped spinning before he heard the pitter patter of her feet. As he got his bearings, the old Firefly's engine spun up so fast he swore he barely had the hatch closed by the time they left atmo.

"Where's Simon?" Kaylee asked frantically. "What happened?"

"We're getting him, little Kaylee," Jayne said, but he didn't even have the heart to tell her not to worry. He shoved his pistol back into its holster and stalked silently to his bunk.

"Sir," Zoe said under her breath. She watched silently as Mal bandaged his leg and leaned against the railings. "River tells me we're going after Reavers now?"

"She aims to get him back. Stopped Jayne from shootin' 'im, 他妈的," Mal said.

"And what's to stop them from shooting us, Sir?" Zoe asked.

"If you want to stop her, I ain't standin' in your way," Mal replied as he straightened up. He wouldn't meet her eye. He knew his first mate would not now pass up a fight with a Reaver if she saw one. "If you aim to join her though, I'd like some word o' warnin' first." He walked past her on the gangplank and headed up to the bridge, where River was burning the engines and pushing Serenity at full tilt towards a diminishing red light in the distance.

She did nothing to acknowledge him, so he sat down in Wash's chair and let the silence fill the space between them. As it settled he thought of what he could say, what she must be thinking. She could read Reavers. He'd wondered as much on Miranda, but the screaming she'd done as a little girl just two years ago told him as much. Was she tracking them like that? Seeing what they must be doing to Simon?

What was done was done. Brother and sister could get mightily attached but with Reavers, it was better to say your good-byes afterwards and spare your loved one the sight of watching your own top 3% being worn by a savage while someone else ravaged your very-post-MedAcad body. There were no nice words for these things, and there was no way to place blame on anyone.

The Reaver-Alliance battle had effectively thinned the population, but the aftermath of Miranda meant the Alliance was more worried about its own livelihood than any publicity it could gain by acknowledging and purging the remaining Reavers. All the crew of Serenity could do was be careful not to cross the line overmuch. The Tam siblings had never brought up Osiris, not now what with Simon and Kaylee. Not yet, at least. Boy still wasn't good at talking, though what he'd be good for now, Mal didn't like to think on.

"They have to rest. I don't. We'll gain on them, I estimate in two weeks, possibly less," River said suddenly. Then she looked at him, her eyes huge and dark, somehow reflecting that faint red light of the Reaver ship in the distance. She added, "with your permission, Captain."

Did she really think there'd be anything of Simon left to save, after two weeks, let alone an hour? He thought back to the man they'd saved before they got boarded by Feds. If River was right and they meant to spare Simon's life...well, it didn't mean they wouldn't spare his body. Or his mind. In two week's time, River might be the saner one of the two. At least she was used to it. Mal didn't want to think what could happen to Simon's finely ordered mind.

"Whatever you think is right for your 大哥," he said, "if you're sure."

She didn't answer, just turned back to that dim red light. Mal left the dark cold room and informed the crew.

It had happened so quickly.

~*~

Two weeks is a long time to wait. It leaves a lot to the imagination. He didn't even want to know what was going on in River's head. Inara was away with a Client on Pelorum, so it fell to Kaylee to bring blankets and food up to River. When she came back with a report that she could make out the bodies lashed to the stern of the Reaver ship, Jayne left the table. When they saw him at the dining table again, he was polishing the axes River had brought on board as souvenirs from Miranda, glaring at them as if he was daring them to say anything.

He got his reward in the form of a small kiss on the cheek from River.

"The baboon has learned to be thoughtful," she said in his ear as her thin fingers caressed the rough handles of the axes.

"You just be careful. You want us to uh, you want any grenades?" Jayne asked. He glanced at the hold nervously. She'd somehow managed to dock against the Reaver ship. They could hear the pounding and the screaming on the other side.

"Don't come with me. Don't open the door for anything until I say," River said as she stepped into the airlock, armed with nothing but those two axes.

"How will we know–" Kaylee began, but River had already slammed the door. Zoe stepped forward and locked it, then nodded to Mal.

He closed his eyes, then opened them to glare down at the green lit button. He had to do this. River would never forgive him. But he could not forget the screams he heard on the other side before he ever opened the airlock. He looked up at the assembled crew, and slammed on the button.

Kaylee turned away and buried her face in Jayne's arm. There was no abatement to the screaming, and there didn't seem to be any change in their tone either. They knew River made no noises, just the scary ones in the dark when everyone was trying to get their sleep.

They waited.

After a while, River's voice clicked over Serenity's intercom.

"Mal? 我需要一点 help. Can you bring a blanket? Please?"

~*~

He kept his kerchief tied up over his nose as he stepped into the sporadically lit gloom of the Reaver ship, now River's ship. He tried not to look down so much, but it was hard because he kept tripping over pieces of...he tried not to look down so much.

Then his eye caught a doll hung up against a...a...The ship was quiet save for the sound of his own stomach emptying itself out. His throat felt thick and he didn't want to call out in this recent tomb, but he found himself trying to clear his throat. He was distinctly aware of the faint drips and electrical shorts in the darkness as he built up the air around his vocal cords.

"Captain."

"Yeaauugh!"

Mal jumped as River grasped his wrist with a wet hand. He shone his torch towards her face, and noticed the blood streaked across her face.

"Everyone else is dead. He did his best," River said inexplicably, and led the way. Mal saw a row of what appeared to be very old and very battered Alliance shipping crates. There were what were once people attached to them, tied down by their wrists and ankles. A few of the more intact ones had, strangely, hypodaermic needles sticking out of them. There was a mess of scattered medical equipment, the remnants of Serenity's portable medical kit. It was easier to think about what he knew, Mal reflected, as his senses shut down at the smell and sight of human remains and human leavings, which gave off very different smells.

These people had been tied to and over these cages by their wrists and ankles, forced to bend their backs over these hard metal crates while God knows what...his stomach lurched, and River grabbed him again.

"The first few days," she said, pointing up to a ventilation duct above them. Mal ignored what hung from the slits. "Keep watch, sneak down, release one into the flights of angels singing thee to thy rest. But no sleep and no eating makes you sloppy. So." She didn't continue. She just tugged him forward down the low narrow galley and stopped at the last crate.

She bent down at the naked figure strapped to it, limbs hanging down from the corners, streaked with blood and other fluids Mal did not want to think about. She stroked the body's swollen face. The figure's chest moved slightly–he was still alive!

"Doc, prep the infir–" The words died in Mal's throat, and he clicked off the walkie-talkie for a moment to swallow the bile that rose in his throat. He tried again. "Zoe, I need you prep the Infirmary. And keep Kaylee confined to her quarters."

He took a second look at the body before him. There were dark stains everywhere, old cuts and large purple and green splotches across the body. Someone had gnawed on an arm, and the rotting meat around his mouth meant they had tried to feed him human flesh. The bile mixed in meant that he'd refused, or at least his body had tried to. His gaze traveled downwards, and what he saw there made his face freeze. That was why River had said to bring a blanket.

River looked up, her face shiny even in the half-light. It was wet with tears.

"Was this the right thing, Captain?" she asked.

He bent down and hacked away Simon's restraints.

~*~

There didn't seem to be enough bandages or enough alcohol in that small glass room to wash away what the Reavers had done to Simon. Zoe had once explained it to the Core boy like this: Reavers will rape you to death, eat your flesh, and sew your skin into their clothes, and if you were very very lucky, they'd do it in that order. It looked to Mal as if they'd had a hard time deciding and gave Simon a sampling of all three at the same time.

It took Jayne to keep Kaylee to her room.

Whenever River wasn't flying the ship, she took up station beside her brother. He still hadn't woken, and Mal wasn't looking forward to when he did. They were pumping him with nutrition, dealing with the deep gashes, the one down his cheek across his lip, the one they had to stitch together on what was left of his arm, and the other ones Mal would rather not think about. He'd seen wounds like that in the war, wounds that kept you alive and made you wish you weren't because what kind of force in Heaven would think up this much pain?

"Hey there lil' albatross," he said softly, coming in with another blanket to drape around his pilot's shoulders. Simon tossed his head, still in fitful sleep, his lips moving but no sound coming out. They hadn't cut out his tongue or his eyes. Feeding him meant they had been trying to turn him, Serenity's civilized Core doctor, into something less than man or beast. The bloodied carvings around his right eye suggested some kind of tribal marking for Simon the Future Reaver.

"Captain." River took hold of Simon's hand and stroked the thumb softly. "Won't wake. Won't let him."

Mal didn't say anything. Sometimes when he couldn't understand River, it was best to let her throw words in the air until something stuck.

"Safe at home with the cuddly water buffalo she gave him for 去年的 Autumn Moon Festival. No screams to wake him from exhaustion, no more nightmares made real. Daddy's not coming, he said so. Quiet here. Good."

"Simon! 老天爷..." Kaylee gripped the doorway for support, staring at the beaten man before her. Behind her, Jayne's heavy boots pounded down the hallway.

"Sorry Mal. I tried to stop her but she surprised me," Jayne said, hands on his knees as he panted.

"Don't know what you were thinkin', tryin' to keep me from him, Captain!" Kaylee touched the back of Simon's other hand, noting the splints that kept his fingers from breaking again. Not even Zoe trusted herself enough with a Dermal Mender to use it on a surgeon's hands. She traced outside the gash in his arm, past the bruises until she could stroke his hair, grown long over these weeks. "He always kept it so neat like..."

"Keeps it, Kaylee. Don't bury the man before he's even stopped breathing," Mal told her, moving towards her even as Simon's breathing changed. "And I don't want you in here for a reason."

"Kaylee?" Simon asked, eyes on her in confusion. His expression morphed into a sort of fear Mal had seen more often on River's face, however, as Simon started and tried to push himself up and away from everyone. His hands slipped on their bandages and splints, and he fell hard, on his elbows, back onto the table.

"Simon!" River cried, and his horror-struck gaze switched to her instead.

"Not you too..." he murmured. "Please, 哎呀, no!"

"Simon, it's us! You're safe!" Kaylee pleaded, reaching out for his face.

"No!" Simon screamed. "Be dead! Be dead! Be quiet! Sh-sh-hush!" His eyes darted past the figures around him, and Mal saw him searching for a way out as they paused on the ventilation ducts and the medicine cabinet, neatly stocked as the doctor had left it two weeks ago.

"Jayne, get her out of here," Mal commanded, nodding towards Kaylee. "River, dope him."

"No! River, I'm a doctor, be still, please stop screaming, shh..." Simon pleaded, one hand clutching her arm and the other covering her mouth. Mal locked the door to the Med Bay behind him and ran for the medicine cabinet, where they kept the sedatives.

"It's okay, they're gone," River said, bending down and whispering close to Simon's ear. Her brother stared blankly, focusing on the sound of her voice as he trembled. "All gone, all clean, not a single nucleotide left."

"Clean? 妹妹, you don't understand, they tried...they tried...they wanted..." Simon choked on his words, his face scrunched up in agony. "All the people, you have to wait, because because...quiet. Only when it's quiet. I can't help if you're screaming, 妹妹, they'll know. They'll know. There are no more emperors."

"It's quiet here. Quiet all the time...no sounds, no screams. No one's going to come for you here. It's your turn to sleep," River murmured, running her fingers through his hair. "Listen. It's quiet."

"No, you have to come, 妹妹, come and be quiet with me," Simon said, falling off the bed and stumbling, pulling her to hide underneath the counter. His reflection against the metal of the bed caught his eye, and he froze. His hand reached up tremblingly to the gash across his lip, and then the bloody markings around the orbit of his right eye.

A coldness stole over Mal's gut as he watched Simon frown in confusion and horror. Could he be confounded enough to think this meant he was a Reaver? By all accounts the good doctor wasn't for cutting people up soon, but Mal didn't like the sound of him wanting Kaylee dead. He felt the weight of the syringe gun in his hand, and watched for River's signal.

Simon crept up to the rough mirror, inspecting his changed appearance, his long hair, his starved and marked appearance. He growled softly at his eye, a low menacing sound Mal had never heard before. He cut it off with a whimper that made Mal want to blow that Reaver ship to pieces. By the ancestors...

They had shaved off his beard, a matted mess of vomit and putrescence, and his hair only took a simple blast of water. He retched suddenly, coughing up empty air as he seemed to recall something that made him back into the corner again to huddle beside his sister. Under the glare of the cold lights, he looked blue and corpsified.

"Simon won't, Simon won't, Simon didn't say..."

"Simon," River said sternly, holding his face with both hands. Then she sighed. "Simon says, don't kill anyone."

"No more emperors. No more kings. And I won't—They'll come back," Simon whispered. "I can't let them hurt you, and I won't let them make me their..." He stopped, swallowing hard as a shudder passed through him. Mal reckoned he must still be in pain from his wounds. What had Simon said when they found that ship got hit by Reavers? Bodies didn't scare him none.

Simon had more than enough in that medkit to overdose his fellow victims. In two weeks of Hell, sometimes the only thing a man could choose was death. Sometimes there were no escape routes left, no clever plans, no sarcastic Core-bred words to save you. And to think on any of the crew of Serenity suffering what Simon had...well, Mal might just have gone crazy his own self.

"Won't be hurt. No power in the 'verse, no cycles. You've always known your own dharma, you walked the path to me."

"It's not like we thought. There's thought and purpose and planning...River, they tried to get me to...they _knew_...they knew _how_...I don't have an advisor, no vizier, no vice premier, no mind, no think tank...it's not like we thought. It's not like we thought!"

"They're gone."

"They're always here...listening...you don't understand...I'm not to be trusted...not supposed to...I don't want...Don't trust me. I won't believe anything. I won't!" Simon curled up, clutching at his head. He barely noticed as Mal swiftly shot him with the tranquilizers he finally found.

"We gotta decide what to do with him. Let's go. Crew's waitin'. He'll be fine here," Mal said, pulling River up and locking the MedBay behind him.

"Well? Is he gonna be ettin' us anytime soon?" Jayne asked Mal. "Cause I'll put a bullet in him soon as...uh..." He covered his mouth when River stepped into the mess hall, and looked elsewhere.

"It's like Miranda," she announced, her bare feet daintily toeing a line to the dining table. "Tried to save the important bits of herself but he saved too much. When they came for what was left, he was already..."

"Broken," said Mal, ignoring her glare. "Is he going to be violent? Try to kill anyone? Eat himself? Eat us?"

"Not alone," River said with a glance behind her. "他以为他可以救他们，可是他只是 one man. 太多 for him. 后来 never alone. Never. And always 他们在更他说话, 一再, 一再, 想教他, 用 his 脑子来 improve 他们的方法...reasonable conjecture to suggest that the Pax 变了 but without additional data and additional technical resources a testable hypothesis does not appear to be a viable solution. The ancillary ethical obstacle of live animal models and failure to obtain necessary ethical standards for testing feasible hypotheses in any multidimensional universe expanding towards heat death means not enough variables but most importantly no clinical testing approval. No human subjects!" She gave them a solemn look. "I killed them all. But 他们更他说话, 要他变, 要他帮, 想 maximize the efficiency and radius of their 要命的动作, and he couldn't not listen."

"天啊!" Mal whispered. It couldn't be. Nobody ever heard of them doing that. And how could River know besides?

"I ain't staying anywhere alone with him," Jayne declared. "Not with him...thinkin' and all."

"Simon would have loved to know that you were afraid of him," Kaylee said.

"I doubt it," Mal said, sitting down to dinner at last.

River turned back to be with her brother, just as he had done for her.

"It'll be 疯子 One and Crazy Two now, talkin' their crazy talk. Where does that leave us, Mal? I don't want the Doc thinkin' I look better inside his belly. Heck, I'd rather look better in red than that."


End file.
